Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic
Background: While existing studies have investigated the role of social media on health-related communication, little is known about the potential differences between different users groups on different social media platforms in responses to a health event. This study sets out to explore the online...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
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2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146301 |
| _version_ | 1811678113524875264 |
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| author | Lwin, May Oo Lu, Jiahui Sheldenkar, Anita Cayabyab, Ysa Marie Yee, Andrew Zi Han Smith, Helen Elizabeth |
| author2 | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information |
| author_facet | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Lwin, May Oo Lu, Jiahui Sheldenkar, Anita Cayabyab, Ysa Marie Yee, Andrew Zi Han Smith, Helen Elizabeth |
| author_sort | Lwin, May Oo |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Background: While existing studies have investigated the role of social media on health-related communication, little is known about the potential differences between different users groups on different social media platforms in responses to a health event. This study sets out to explore the online discourse of governmental authorities and the public in Singapore during the recent Zika pandemic in 2016. Methods: Social media data were extracted from Facebook and Twitter using retroactive keyword sourcing of the word “Zika” to search for posts and a location filter of “Singapore”. Government posts, public posts, and replies to these original posts were included in the temporal and textual analysis. Results: Overall, Facebook contained more government and individual content whereas Twitter had more content from news media accounts. Though the relative volume of Zika content from different data sources paralleled the peaks and troughs of Zika activities across time, discourses from different data sources differed in their temporal patterns, such that the public discourse died down faster than the government discourse after the outbreak was declared. In addition, the content of discourses differed among data sources. While government discourse included factual information of the disease, public discourse contained more elements of care such as worry about the risks to pregnant women, and elements of community such as well-wishes to each other. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates the temporal and content differences between user groups and social media platforms in social media conversations during the Zika pandemic. It suggests that future research should examine the collective discourse of a health event by investigating social media discourses within varied sources rather than focusing on a singular social media platform and by one particular type of users. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:48:06Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/146301 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:48:06Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1463012023-03-05T15:57:27Z Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic Lwin, May Oo Lu, Jiahui Sheldenkar, Anita Cayabyab, Ysa Marie Yee, Andrew Zi Han Smith, Helen Elizabeth Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) Social sciences::Mass media Zika Social Media Background: While existing studies have investigated the role of social media on health-related communication, little is known about the potential differences between different users groups on different social media platforms in responses to a health event. This study sets out to explore the online discourse of governmental authorities and the public in Singapore during the recent Zika pandemic in 2016. Methods: Social media data were extracted from Facebook and Twitter using retroactive keyword sourcing of the word “Zika” to search for posts and a location filter of “Singapore”. Government posts, public posts, and replies to these original posts were included in the temporal and textual analysis. Results: Overall, Facebook contained more government and individual content whereas Twitter had more content from news media accounts. Though the relative volume of Zika content from different data sources paralleled the peaks and troughs of Zika activities across time, discourses from different data sources differed in their temporal patterns, such that the public discourse died down faster than the government discourse after the outbreak was declared. In addition, the content of discourses differed among data sources. While government discourse included factual information of the disease, public discourse contained more elements of care such as worry about the risks to pregnant women, and elements of community such as well-wishes to each other. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates the temporal and content differences between user groups and social media platforms in social media conversations during the Zika pandemic. It suggests that future research should examine the collective discourse of a health event by investigating social media discourses within varied sources rather than focusing on a singular social media platform and by one particular type of users. Ministry of Health (MOH) National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Published version This research is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council under its NMRC/ZRRF/0004/2016. The funders played no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript. 2021-02-08T06:56:44Z 2021-02-08T06:56:44Z 2020 Journal Article Lwin, M. O., Lu, J., Sheldenkar, A., Cayabyab, Y. M., Yee, A. Z. H., & Smith, H. E. (2020). Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 804-. doi:10.1186/s12889-020-08923-y 1471-2458 0000-0003-2984-7435 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146301 10.1186/s12889-020-08923-y 32471495 2-s2.0-85085701308 1 20 en NMRC/ZRRF/0004/2016 BMC Public Health © 2020 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Mass media Zika Social Media Lwin, May Oo Lu, Jiahui Sheldenkar, Anita Cayabyab, Ysa Marie Yee, Andrew Zi Han Smith, Helen Elizabeth Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title | Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title_full | Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title_fullStr | Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title_full_unstemmed | Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title_short | Temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the Zika virus pandemic |
| title_sort | temporal and textual analysis of social media on collective discourses during the zika virus pandemic |
| topic | Social sciences::Mass media Zika Social Media |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146301 |
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